Jane Roberts around 1999

In 1999, recently arrived in Los Angeles from her little town of Wolfeboro New Hampshire, my mom was diagnosed during the first visit with her new doctor with dementia. Where a diagnosis of cancer used to be feared by many as an automatic death sentence, today many people, including my partner Sally are “cancer survivors”. But today for many, the most fearful diagnosis is one of “Alzheimer’s” or “dementia”. To date I have not encountered anyone introducing themselves as an “Alzheimer’s” or “dementia survivor”. How can a person (or their loved ones) come to grips with “losing their mind”? What is more precious and irreplaceable to us than our memories and our personality?

A few years after my dad’s death in 1984, my mom was diagnosed with an atrial fibrillation, which was causing her heart to not pump blood properly. What had provoked this condition was never confirmed, but her doctor suspected that it had been some sort of virus that had attacked and damaged the muscles of, and maybe physically reflecting perhaps the metaphoric “breaking” of, her heart, after a lifetime struggle with self esteem, lacking the love of her own mother, and never finding the kind of loving relationship with a man that she continued to long for. (more…)

In the early 1990s I read a book that, more so than anything I had read before or since, transformed the way I look at the world and helped me distill and inspired me to pursue my life’s purpose. The book is The Chalice and the Blade by Riane Eisler, a feminist, activist and futurist with degrees in sociology and law from the University of California. Born in Vienna, Austria, her family fled from the Nazis to Cuba when she was a child, and she later emigrated to the United States where she continues to live and work today. (more…)

People used to the more traditional rituals of heterosexual courtship have asked me, “So how did you propose to your wife?”, wanting to hear about that moment I “popped the question”. The short answer is it didn’t work that way. The longer response is to tell them that in our case, it was a philosophical discussion and negotiation of sorts over several months that led at some point to both of us agreeing to do the marriage thing. The decision slowly evolved between us, until one day one of us said something to the effect of, “So are we going to do it?”, and the other indicated affirmation. (more…)

A recurring theme in my writing is the quest for self-esteem, particularly by youth, and the positive benefits to individual (and societal) development that flow from achieving and maintaining that self-esteem. There has been a lot of effort in recent decades to focus parenting and educational practice on promoting self-esteem in youth, which I think is a good thing, but is still controversial. Critics of efforts to encourage self-esteem in youth, rightly point out that there have been misguided efforts as well, such as simply telling kids that everything they do is wonderful (which even the kids know is not true), which in my mind encourages narcissism rather than self-esteem. Other critics say that too much self-esteem is a bad thing, turning otherwise respectful kids into insensitive brats. (more…)

My partner Sally shared with me a piece in Teacher Magazine on homework, and in particular the thoughts of Rick Wormeli, a TLN (Teacher Leaders Network) forum member who writes and speaks about homework issues frequently as a professional development consultant, which I attempt to summarize below… (more…)

You may or may not have noticed the links down at the bottom of the right column on this blog page, but I thought I would take this opportunity to talk about each. I have found the internet to be an incredible tool for researching, making connections, and pursuing my own development in ways I could never imagine doing before the Web… (more…)

In 2003, after three years in a humanistic alternative public charter middle school, our daughter Emma decided to experience attending a large conventional public high school, with nearly 4000 students, for her ninth grade year. One day, early in the semester, one of the vice-principals was a “guest lecturer” for a couple hundred of the Ninth graders, including Emma, that were spending their PE period waiting because they had not yet been assigned to a specific physical education class. He welcomed them to the school and reminded them that their teachers deserved the students’ respect, but the students would have to earn their teachers’ respect. Emma was now duly welcomed and warned that she was now a participant in a large public institution for youth, where she would presumably have to behave and perform to gain the conditional respect of the adult staff of the school. (more…)

I think parents helping with, managing, or even doing their kids homework is a big untold story of how many families cope today with keeping their kids “in the game” of conventional school. So when it at times crosses the line from parents helping to parents doing, is that cheating or is it just what you have to do sometimes to help your stressed out kid survive and navigate the institution? And doesn’t what seems to be a fairly common practice (at least around the circle of parents that I know) favor the kids who have parents that are academically talented, have the time to spend their evenings assisting their kids, and are driven by one reason or another to have their kids be judged as successful (rather than necessarily be successful) at school? (more…)